Interview with a Furor
"Why are you doing this to me? Am I not living up to what I'm supposed to be? Why am I seething with this animosity? I think you owe me a Great. '' ''Big. Apology..." --Nine Inch Nails 'Terrible Lie' 'Pretty Hate Machine' Conversations with the Enraged "Could you please tell me a little about yourself? Lets start with the basics, what is your name?" "Jake. Jake Armitage." "Very good. Subject still possesses singular identity perception. Mr. Armitage, can you tell us where you are from?" "Cell E-005, Eearthworld in the Manlands." "Subject seemes to have developed a series of false memories of his past as well. Let the records state that in his written testing the subject stated "the Earth world on the Cell mentioned was obliterated by RUDE some turns ago". Mr. Armitage, can you tell us how you are feeling right now?" "Irritated." "What ever for?" "I don't like you." "Why not?" "Your stupidity. Your obvious obsessive compulsive cleanliness. How sterile your words are and how feeble your mind is." "Let the record state the temperature in the room has increased by 4 degrees celcius. Mr. Armitage, I am a medical doctor with secondary education in psychiatry and parapsychology, I would question how you come to the conclusion that I am 'stupid' as you put it." "You think your safe. You don't ask questions any more." "This place is more than sufficient to keep us safe at the moment, sir. Are you quite sure you are alright? And what do you mean by that, that I no longer ask questions?" "Your complacent. Lazy. Ineffective. Insufficient. Your a medical doctor with training in psychiatry, and even after three days of closed observation you haven't been able to diagnose any pathological behaviors or psychological defects from the paper tests, save of course the vague diagnosis of psychosis. I could hear you through the glass, I could smell the fear in your sweat when I twisted the guard's head off. It was disgusting. How much prompting did you need by the CO before you finally brought me in here for questioning? Was it painful to give the order to bring me out of solitary confinement and have me sit across this table? You don't ask questions any more, I would wager you never did at all. Why did you go into medicine?" "It seemed to be what I was best suited for, I wanted to help people and I was good in school." "54750." "Excuse me?" "That is the number of people you could treat, theoretically speaking, if you were to see three patients a day, every day, for the next fifty years. How many patients do you see in a day?" "I oversee the care of every person in this hospital." "Inefficient. You treat fifty patients consecutively for 15 years, and at the end of that fifteen years you've only treated fifty with minimal results given that the majority of the people sent to these wards are incurable. Give or take you will treat somewhere in the hundreds if things stay as they are. How much money do you make?" "That's none of your business." "The average professional in your field with your training makes around a hundred anf fifty thousand dollars a year at a hospital and more if they publish books and research off of mine, or any other individuals case in which you were involved. Would you like to know how many children die of pneumonia, starvation, measles, influenza, athsma, or abuse every day? I'll bet you drive a sports car of some kind, or own a yacht. You make enough money in one year to feed entire villages of starving people, you have the training and the knowledge to heal the sick, you have the benefit of scientific theory and principles with which to educate others and rid the world of archaic superstition and willful ignorance." "You make me sound like some kind of superhero, which I assure you, I am not. We are here to talk about you, not me. So tell me, why did you decapitate the guard?" "If you were to ask the little boy who lives three houses down from where the unfortunate Guard lived, the same boy who rode his bike up and down the street, he might tell you why, but then again he might not ever tell anyone about it. People like that Guard are merely husks living flesh holding rotten souls that only serve to spread their infection. He probably spread it to that little boy as well. Children are It's favorite targets." "I take it you are a religious man?" "No." "But you mentioned the 'soul', a religious concept." "The bio-electric current that powers your body, the energy that seems to have come from everywhere and nowhere that drives cellular function forward and onward, the consciousness that is contained by reflective elements. All things are made of energy, and not all of it is good. This includes the Soul, which is the summary of your experience, deeds, thoughts, words, and energy." "Let it the records show that the subject claims to have a concept of right and wrong. Is this why you killed those other people? Were they rotten too?" "Yes. To their very cores. So I unmade them." "You are referring to the method by which you disposed of their bodies?" "In a manner of speaking." "Can you tell us where they are?" "NO." "Why not?" "I mean to say, they don't exist any more. At all. Their matter, their energy, is no longer here, there, or anywhere at all." "So you burned them?" "Not with any kind of fire you've ever seen, but close enough. But even if you burn something, its matter and energy still exists. Even if it has been reduced to the barest molecular trace, it still exists. When I burn something there is nothing left, quite literally."